Entrepreneur program teaches students about business, for fun and real profit

Thursday

Apr 3, 2014 at 8:52 PM

Just a few months ago they were “just kids” – but soon, with some help, they’ll be CEOs, even if their only employee is themselves.

By James Postjpost@the-leader.com

Just a few months ago they were “just kids” – but soon, with some help, they’ll be CEOs, even if their only employee is themselves.

The students are part of this year’s Young Entrepreneur’s Academy, a partnership between the Corning-Painted Post School District and the Corning Area Chamber of Commerce.

The 30-week program, now in 80 cities across the country, is designed to bring entrepreneurs as young as 11 from an idea to a functioning business, with the help of mentors who have been successful in business themselves.

Though organized by the C-PP district, this year’s class, the program’s second, was also open to students from schools outside the district.

On Thursday, the students presented their business proposals to a group of potential investors from area businesses, seeking real money from the investors’ own pockets in order to make their dreams a reality.

The business plans presented to the group ran the gamut from selling hand-made beaded jewelry to designing and programming an original video game.

Entrepreneur Jessica Currie, who calls her business The All Natural Market, is hoping to sell her line of tea-infused bath and body products on web craft hub Etsy, as well as through farmers’ markets and other local outlets.

She makes and packages the products herself, and said she’s hoping to have more than $3,000 in sales in her first year of operation.

She said she learned to make the products, like soaps and lotions, from information available online.

Local businessman Rick Maxa, owner of Bottles and Corks, among other things, said that was the focus of the first stage of the program – developing an idea, and learning to be realistic about what you can and can’t do on your own.

Maxa said one thing that he stressed to students was “you must be able to do this in 30 weeks.”

Still, he said he never felt pressure about getting the students’ business ideas nailed down in time for the next phase of the program – developing a business plan.

“It’s just a natural progression,” Maxa said. “It just seems to work.”

Sixth-grader Halla Brill hopes students’ love of sharing their art and writing will make a success of MyArt-icles.com, a website she’s developing to allow sharing of their work online.The site would charge customers to upload their work to the site to be seen and commented on by others – and also charge site viewers who want to download items they like.Brill’s business plan has the advantage of minimal upfront cost or ongoing expenses, at least as long as the community on the site stays small enough to manage on her own – she’s planning to review each submission as it comes in to make sure it’s appropriate.Barry Nicholson, who helped the students develop their business plans, said there was a larger focus this year on the financial aspect of planning, making sure the dollars and cents add up before moving forward.Though Brill’s web-based business allows her to minimize expenses, Nicholson said very idea of a “web-based business” is becoming harder to define.“Every business now has a web-based aspect,” he said.Sruti Akula, presenting her business, “srulutions,” said she’d come up with her idea in order to solve a problem she’d faced herself – organizing storage space.Her plan for a storage unit that expands both horizontally and vertically isn’t patented yet – just the patent application costs nearly $900 – but she’s hoping to partner with a larger company in 2015 to mass produce it.Since the design is complex, Akula said she knows, despite her experience prototyping through her LEGO robotics team, she won’t be able to produce it without large-scale manufacturing capacity.Paul Dohn, of Victus Management Group, will be working with the students for the next ten weeks on how to meet those challenges and go from plan to functioning business.He said part of that process will be dealing with the outcome of Thursday’s investor presentations.If students get less investment capital than they hoped for, Dohn said, they’ll have to figure out how to downsize their plans. And if they get more, they have to responsibly account for how they’ll use the money they didn’t include in their planning.Chamber President Denise Ackley said the group was impressive, and “much more committed” overall than the first class.She said all of the students who began the program advanced to the investor presentations this year, unlike last year – though Nicholson suggested, in self-deprecating fashion, that it could be because the instructors had learned from last year’s program as well.Ackley noted that last year’s winner, Danielle Cohen, then a sixth-grader at Northside Blodgett, was still operating her business, BEADarling, selling beaded jewelry through a number of local businesses.Cohen is actually looking for more outlets for her product, and is in the process of setting up online sales of her work as well, Ackley said.